Able Scouts

This article appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of Abilities Digest

Perhaps all Scouts are anxious on their first trip to camp, espe-cially long-term camp. For some Scouts, and even some parents, the anxiety may be justified by mobility problems. In other cases, cognitive issues may allow anxiety to reach extreme levels. You can help relieve anxiety by making a preview visit to the camp before the actual time away from home. Some Scouts might do well by watching a video of the camp or taking a “virtual visit” online. Others benefit most by traveling to the actual camp and seeing it in person.

Five minutes of looking at something is always better than five hours of talking about it. The preview trip eliminates mysteries and allows Scouts and parents to spot possible problem areas. In some instances, a simple item brought from home will address a lot of challenges. For summer camp or day camp, see if you can go out during the staff training/set-up days for the camp. Not only can you address the physical obstacles of the camp, the Scout can get acquainted with some staff members and you can talk to staff about how to include the Scout in the camp’s activities. These conversations go so much better when the staff is not in the mad swirl of holding camp with large numbers of Scouts.

Even when camp administrators, rangers, and property managers carefully inspect places for obstructions to access, things get missed. For example, one camp’s accessible path to the dining hall had a door latch that was sticky and would not open without fiddling it in a certain way. When you live with a mobility limitation or other disability you know better than anyone else what to watch out for to take care of yourself. It’s not just mobility and access that could matter. There could be sensory issues with light and sound, or a need you never imagined until it crops up.

The best way to help ensure a good experience is to allow families of Scouts with special needs to come out to the camp location and walk through the areas where the Scout will need to go and then team with the camp staff to come up with work arounds.

Preview tours work best when the family can be met by someone who is actually on the leadership staff for the camp session. You can also have one of the specialists from your Council’s special needs committee come out for the tour. The scope of the tour should be almost the same as the tour the camp host gives a unit when it arrives at camp.

For efficiency, camps may provide a scheduled tour opportunity and promote it in the camp’s guide for leaders and participants. Here are opportunities to schedule such tours:

• a staff workday in the spring ahead of the camp session
• a weekend when a leadership staffer will already be at the camp for another event
• during the camp set-up week immediately prior to opening camp.

If these times don’t work, you may have to be more resourceful. If the Scout lives close enough, the family can come out and meet with the camp ranger during the week, and the ranger can report any issues back to the camp director. If the Scout is coming in from a long distance, a realistic option may be to ask the Scout/family to arrive at the camp a day early, and give the tour right after the last week’s campers leave for home.